Magic Leap Is Here, But Not Quite Ready for the Masses

Testing the Magic Leap One headset reminds me of my experience with the Microsoft HoloLens: It's cutting-edge, impressive, and nowhere near ready for consumer use.

The Magic Leap One is the culmination of years of development and hype from Magic Leap, and we have one in PC Labs. I've been testing it for over a week, and it's given me something of a rush. This is remarkable augmented reality technology that can do some incredible things with sensors, cameras, lenses, projectors, and your own eyes. Like the Microsoft HoloLens, the Magic Leap One is a revolutionary device that could shape how we use computers in the future.

That is 15, maybe 20 years in the future.

If you aren't familiar with Magic Leap, the concept behind its headset is very similar to that of the Microsoft HoloLens, which I first tested just over two years ago. These are both head-mounted displays that track your surroundings and project images around you based on those surroundings. You can toss a web browser on a blank wall, or let little knights fight each other on your desk. The projections are solely through the headset, so you're the only one who can see them, but for your eyes, they produce a remarkably immersive experience.

It's a step past virtual reality, which just blocks out your surroundings and completely replaces them with other images (we have a helpful explainer on the difference between VR and AR if you want to know more). You can still see around you, but thanks to very advanced position detection and environment mapping, you can fill your surroundings with virtual images, objects, and programs.

The potential here is incredible. Imagine your own customizable art gallery, projected on the walls of your home. Or think about playing a video game that uses the layout of your office as an arena. Imagine talking to friends across the country as if they were sitting in the chair next to you. These are incredible concepts just begging to be put into the home, and the technology is already being explored in enterprise and research environments with completely different equipment designed for specific tasks.

After playing with both the Magic Leap One and the HoloLens, though, it's clear that the technology is a long way off from widespread use. We aren't talking about the few years between the Oculus Rift Development Kit and the consumer-ready Oculus Rift. We're talking about the two decades between late '90s VR headsets and the retail Oculus Rift.

The Magic Leap One is a technical improvement over the HoloLens, since its field of view is larger and the experience doesn't feel as much like you're staring through a tiny virtual window at everything. It's still an incredibly rough system aimed purely at developers and early adopters with deep pockets, with very little utility for normal consumers. It's also buggy, awkward, and not particularly pleasant to use for extended periods. And then there is the $2,300 price tag.

None of those details are going to get better any time soon. The high-end components that make up this expensive technology will need to see a major generational shift in pricing before it becomes affordable to the masses.

And the technology won't get much less buggy until on-the-fly area mapping improves by a generation or two, to the point that it can recognize walls more than six feet away and doesn't completely break when analyzing dark or reflective surfaces. And it won't be appealing to consumers until there's a wide library of useful and compelling software that can hold user interest for longer than a weekend.

VR spent a long time even getting close to that point, and AR in the same stripe as HoloLens and Magic Leap is nowhere near that. These headsets occupy the same place as the Nintendo Virtual Boy and Forte VFX1: concepts years ahead of their time with awkward, expensive implementations that have too many flaws to navigate and too few pieces of software to use with them.

There's also the fact that they are big, clunky pieces of plastic you need to wear. Google Glass was awkward enough to wear in public, but the big plastic salad bowl of the HoloLens and the Maz Kanata bug eyes of the Magic Leap One are worse. VR headsets are also fairly awkward, but when you're just sitting back and taking it in instead of interacting with your surroundings, the concept of visible dignity isn't quite as important.

These are goofy-looking, buggy, expensive toys. And that's what they're going to be for a while still.

Augmented reality will keep developing, and maybe we will have a Blade Runner 2049 future where your surroundings can be digitally changed to suit your tastes and everything from entertainment to work can pop up in front of you with real-time, eye-filling displays. That's just more likely to be in 2049 than in 2019.

The HoloLens and Magic Leap are good early steps in really promising technology, but they aren't anywhere near the part of the road that's paved and filled with people. However AR develops as a consumer product, in two decades we'll probably look at the HoloLens and Magic Leap in the same way we look at VR helmets as portrayed in Hackers and Lawnmower Man: goofy, overbuilt devices that were a shadow of what they would become.

About the Author

Will Greenwald has been covering consumer technology for a decade, and has served on the editorial staffs of CNET.com, Sound & Vision, and Maximum PC. His work and analysis has been seen in GamePro, Tested.com, Geek.com, and several other publications. He currently covers consumer electronics in the PC Labs as the in-house home entertainment expert, reviewing TVs, media hubs, speakers, headphones, and gaming accessories. Will is also an ISF Level II-certified TV calibrator, which ensures the thoroughness and accuracy of all PCMag TV reviews. See Full Bio